


Swing My Heart Across the Line

by tanktrilby



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: CCG!Hide, M/M, Shoujo manga au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-03-19 22:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3626178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hide, at sixteen, is a tangle of uncoordinated limbs and too-fast words. The CCG sends him from one corner of Tokyo to the other, and he makes awful jokes about being a professional transfer student that give his superiors headaches. </p><p>(or, the AU where Hide was raised in the CCG)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kaneki makes it into high school mostly okay. He’s constantly surprised by the people who cluster around him, like friendly pigeons, greeting him in the morning and asking him about what he’s reading. His words still stutter, like they did in middle school, and he hasn’t quite grown into his long limbs or powerful kagune yet, but he feels like he’s getting there. He has ghoul friends, which he’s endlessly thankful for, and he has human friends, which baffles him but he’s grateful for them too. It’s far from the suffocating nightmare his life had been the first few years after changing.

 His classmates don’t seem to care that he’s neither human or ghoul, or that he’s just a shy boy who speaks too softly to be heard. People sling arms around his shoulders, and drag him into conversations; girls share their decorative synthetic ghoul food with him. He’s popular and he doesn’t know how it happened, but every day he thanks the world for being this kind. Kindness isn’t something he’d grown up expecting from others. He’s so glad he was wrong.

Kaneki goes to high school, and studies hard, and fits in. He’s hesitantly, optimistically happy, and if anything’s missing, he’s only aware of it in the back of his mind. It’s like the ache from a phantom limb, and he knows that if he ignores it, it will go away.

*

Hide, at sixteen, is a tangle of uncoordinated limbs and too-fast words. The CCG sends him from one corner of Tokyo to the other, and he makes awful jokes about being a professional transfer student that give his superiors headaches. He has three plants he takes with him everywhere, setting them down in a patch of sunlight in his apartment of the week. He gives them names, but those names keep changing. It’s a confusing, mercurial existence, but he’s happy with it.

Akira makes a noise like an angry cat whenever he gathers the courage to suggest field missions, so he’s mostly given up on those. Maybe they’ll let him take the tougher cases when he stops growing and can finally wield a quinque without tripping over his own feet. For now, it’s simple infiltration, and some detective work that Seidou manages to sneak into his folder. He likes his job, and hopes to get better at it. He _knows_ that it’s what he was born to do, just like he knows how to breathe and sleep.

 As summer draws near, the CCG grows antsy. Hide doesn’t know what it is about the short, sticky nights that makes the aberrant ghouls come out, but the stats of ghoul attacks rocket up every year and the CCG finds itself understaffed and overworked. He’s been dropping hints -subtly, or as subtly as he can manage- about being on Amon’s squad, but when he gets it back, all his folder has is a description of maybe the millionth vaguely notorious high school for him to transfer into.

Amon grades his papers while he listens to Hide’s bitching, because apparently the student he was supposed to monitor was in the advanced classes and Hide needed to sit through a series of exams to make it there. Maybe being called a prodigy since he got the job has been doing sneaky things to his ego, because he’s a little miffed to discover that when it comes to the actual curriculum, he’s overwhelmingly ordinary.  

“-I have _training,”_ Hide whines. “I’ve been here since I was _six._ I think by now I’d have enough experience to at least run backup on your missions, Amon-san.”

“Akira and I discussed it, and we would prefer you to complete high school,” Amon says patiently. “You don’t need to take this mission very seriously. Ward 20 is stable enough for you to complete your studies in peace. Put that down, it’s dangerous.”

Hide puts the vial down and sulks. “But I saw the new schedule, the shifts are insane.” He leans back in his leather chair, stretching like a cat. “A few of the guys were complaining down at the office. The morning ones look short, for some reason.” He grins. “The guys who got the mornings shouldn’t look that shift horse in the mouth.”

Amon looks pained. Hide keeps beaming at him, and Amon finally sighs, his hand coming up to rub his temple.

“Revise Literature, you’re not in the clear yet,” he says, handing back his graded papers. “And stop hacking into the database to look at confidential files, we can’t keep pretending we don’t notice.”

He pauses, and Hide sees his eyes soften. “There’s no need for you to worry about us. It happens every year, and we’re perfectly equipped to handle it. You’ve been working hard these past few years, and we want to ease some of the pressure for you before you formally join us. Take this one easy, Nagachika.”

Hide bites back his protests and looks down at his red-splattered papers instead. He thinks about the picture on the printout- the boy, the half-ghoul he was supposed to monitor. Even in the photo, his eyes had looked kind.

Maybe, he allows, Amon’s right. Maybe it was time he slowed down a little. Who knew, maybe this time he’d actually make some friends.

“Roger that,” he says, and thinks, _Kaneki Ken, huh._


	2. Chapter 2

The exams come a week after that; Hide trudges through the language-y subjects and bounds more happily through the science ones, ultimately landing more or less safely in the advanced classes like he’d planned . Amon’s busy, so Akira’s in charge of congratulating him: Hide turns up in her office and is awarded a ballpoint pen that Akira digs out of her supplies while he waits. He tests it out and isn’t surprised at all when it leaks all over his hands and his new uniform, making him look like some sort of hideous squid-murderer. And it’s not even the worst gift he’d gotten from her, is the saddest thing.

“Well done,” Akira says brusquely. “Investigator Amon says that if you don’t keep your grades up you’ll get kicked out of the mission. That is all. Now get out, and don’t come back before you graduate.”

“Ah, don’t be like that, Akira-san,” Hide whines. Akira turns her blandest expression on him, the one that makes all the aberrant ghouls shiver and shake, and Hide grins sunnily back at her. “At least tell me you’re proud of me. I worked my butt off to ace those tests, you know. I am currently butt-less. The world has been deprived of- oomph, ow.”

The pen Akira throws at him bounces off his head and sinks into the carpet. “Keep that one too,” she says flatly. “And fix your uniform, you’re a disgrace, Nagachika. You have ten seconds before I get out of this chair and you’ve never come close to beating me in hand-to-hand yet.”

Hide whimpers. But only a little. “Yes ma’am, good day ma’am.”

Before he slips the pen that nearly killed him into his pocket, he glances down at it, surprised by its weight. It looks expensive; Hide knows shit-all about ink pens and even he can tell this one’s a belter.

And it’s got his name on it, etched discreetly near the end.

Hide grins so hard his cheeks hurt.

“Thank you, Akira-san!” he bellows at her closed door, and sprints out of the office before she -or anyone else who heard his yelling- can catch him.

*

No amount of whining and complaining gets him back in his old apartment -conveniently close to all major aberrant sighting points, as well as a store that stocked all his favorite weird-flavored energy drinks- so Saturday morning finds Hide moving in to a well-lit suburban area that’s still within a regular student’s budget. The CCG doesn’t like the cover stories he comes up with on the fly, so they supply him with one beforehand: something depressingly boring about having moved from Hokkaido that Hide takes as an opportunity to adopt an (awful, he’s told) accent.

He spends the whole day hauling his computer shit back and forth and rattling off his Hide-from-Hokkaido spiel to the neighbors who stop by, and it’s almost dusk when he’s done. From there, he only has a grocery run before he can pass out, so he gathers his limp noodle-y limbs, finds his wallet, and sets out for the combini down the road.

The neighborhood really is pretty swanky, compared to the dodgy street mazes he prefers. Even the back alley he marks out in the map on his phone has a line of streetlamps lighting it up in an untroubled glow. He’d feel bad about bringing his brand of barely-legal trouble here.

He’s checking out the thin partings between fences, zigzagging through the streets to memorize the general setup when he rounds the corner and- _fuck._

_Thin, delicate fingers curled along the spine of a book. Hair the color of bone tossed in the soft-moving wind, eyelashes sweeping over pale cheeks. Kagune: rinkaku, fanning gently around the clearing._

Hide blinks rapidly, his eyes tearing. The feeling of having sand in his eyes fades, and when his vision refocuses the scene in front of him is a little less surreal.

The boy that’s sitting on a bench in the small walled-off enclosure has black hair, and there’s -and Hide checks, shakily, and then with a little bit more confidence- a notable lack of kagune just swaying casually in the air.

Most probably, his mind just skipped over some visual details but Hide’s not so sure. _Trust your instincts,_ was what Amon repeated ad nauseam, _even when they’re as terrible as yours, Nagachika._ And that hallucination had been too vivid to pass off.

And there’s always the possibility it’s one of his Hunches. The risks are too great; he’s walking forward before he knows it.

“Yo,” Hide calls, smiling bright and trying to decide whether to vault the fence or not. Not, he decides, when the boy looks up with a startled expression bordering on panic. He settles for a seriously uncool little wave. “I had no idea they had a place like this here. Pretty rad, huh.”

It really kind of is- the houses here are perfectly box-shaped and perfectly boring, even in this residential part of town. It had been gloriously disorganized back in Ward 14, but he guesses that spots of sunlight and trees like this wouldn’t have fit there, so it’s one good thing about moving to 20.

It’s built on an intersection of four roads, he notes. He’d been heading east and downhill in repeated L shapes, taking the long way around, so there’s a very good chance he would have missed this place entirely if he had diverted even a little. His apartment faces the main road, and if he’d been keeping track properly, he guesses that the street directly on his left should get him fairly close to home.

Aside from the boy, there’s a little girl rolling around on the grass with a Siberian husky, and her laughter rings through the air, high and clear. The dog’s about five times bigger than her, and keeps gently tackling her to the ground, making her giggle. It’s pretty darn cute.

Hide looks back at the boy. When they make eye contact, he stiffens a little but smiles tentatively back. “Are you…new here?”

“Mm, yeah.” Belatedly, Hide remembers his Hokkaido accent and feels bad. “Just moved in today, and I feel like a zombie, man, you won’t believe how hard it is to convince your landlady that you’re not some kind of pervert or a criminal on the run when you have as much computer shit as I do.”

The boy ducks his head and Hide startles. He’s… _laughing._

Hide’s knees go a little weak. _He’s so cute,_ and is he seriously covering his mouth with his hand? Yes. Yes he is.

Hide’s chest does a wobbly thing. He’s an embarrassment to the CCG. What would Amon do? Not grin at his newfound crush like an idiot, probably.

The boy looks back up at him, eyes still crinkled with laughter. “I’m glad you found this place.” He flushes then, before Hide can catch up to what he said. “I mean. It’s a nice place, not a lot of people know about it so it’s always very peaceful. Not that I mind people knowing! Um, how can I put it- you’re laughing at me.”

He doesn’t sound offended, just reproachful. Hide _is_ laughing, helplessly charmed by this stranger he’s just met. “Maybe just a little,” he grins at the boy, mischievous. “But I get it. It would suck if this place got really crowded. Most people wouldn’t fit in at all, not like-” _Not like you,_ he was about to say, before he trails off, horrified by how lame that sounds. “Uh.”

The boy smiles at him and Hide’s heart does the wobbly thing again. “There’s another, proper park a little further uphill,” he says kindly, pointing at the street directly opposite the one Hide’s on. “That’s where most of the residents around here go, but this place is big enough for us.”

“Yeah, I think I saw that one!” Hide bounces on his toes a little. “But it must be _huge,_ if it connects to this road too. Like, super-big, because my place is on the main road and I think I can see the trees from our back garden.”

The boy’s dark eyes shine at him. “It is, it’s very big. Sometimes we-” his face changes, expression sliding into horror as he looks away from Hide for a moment. “ _Oh my god,_ Dog, don’t _eat_ Hinami-chan!”

He hurries off, leaving Hide blinking at the empty bench and fallen book. When Hide looks over, the boy’s joined the tangle of little girl and Siberian husky, and seems to be chastising and worrying over them both. He gets licked and hugged for his efforts, and Hide watches the way his mouth fights against a smile.

 _I guess this is how ghouls in peaceful wards live,_ he muses as he waves. His mind isn’t something he can turn off- he knows what he’s dealing with, how strange and extraordinary this coincidence is. _So this is Kaneki Ken._

The boy -Kaneki- waves back, his shoulders shaking with laughter. Something inside Hide squeaks happily, making his toes curl with anticipation, along with the natural rush of giddiness that comes with having a stupid teenage crush.  

The little girl is waving at him too, and Hide starts waving continuously like a ditzy windmill. “I’ll see you around!” he shouts, before he can think better of it.

Kaneki’s already joyful expression positively _glows._ He nods, very fast, and even from the distance Hide can tell how bright his eyes are.

Hide manages to turn around and drag himself back home. His normally acute sense of direction is shot, so he wanders for about ten minutes with a big goofy smile on his face, lost and not caring one bit.


	3. Chapter 3

In the three days it takes for him to settle in to school, Hide accidentally contradicts a teacher, insults a senpai, disbands a club, and manages to get an entire shelf-full of library books to avalanche on top of his head.

“Oh, are you alri- _wha?”_ says whoever was on the other side of the shelf, voice climbing into the hysterical. “ _How did this happen,_ oh my god are you okay?”

Hide says, through a mouthful of book, “Um. Define okay.”

“ _Hide?”_ some rustling and scrambling later, Kaneki’s pretty face appears from a gap between hardbacks. “Hide, what happened? Are you hurt? What if you’re bleeding, it could get worse if I tried moving you, I should call the nurse and-”

Hide sighs wistfully. Kaneki’s so _cute,_ even on the verge of panic like this. “I’m fine, just leave me here to die,” he mumbles.

Kaneki’s eyes grow as wide as saucers. “ _Hide.”_

“Joking, joking,” Hide tells him hastily, and wiggles his hand out to touch Kaneki’s wrist lightly. “See? Perfectly fine. No broken bones or anything. Tell them to hold the fireworks,” he adds darkly.

Kaneki’s disapproving expression changes into confusion. “Them?”

Hide blinks sadly up at him. “Everyone in this school hates me,” he wails, and immediately gets shushed by what sounds like a hundred deflating balloons. He sinks further into his cocoon of books and looks glumly back at Kaneki. “See?”

Kaneki’s lips are twitching, the bastard. He brings a hand -the one Hide’s not holding- up to his mouth in an attempt to hide it. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” he says kindly. It’s ruined by the tiny giggles that pepper his words. Hide _likes him so much._ “You’re a little different, so they need to get used to you.”

“You _say_ that.” Hide crosses his arms, causing a few books to fall off his tomb. “We can’t all be perfect like you, Kaneki.”

Kaneki blushes bright red, ducking his eyes away. Hide’s heart _thunks,_ like an out-of-control basketball, because Kaneki is _delightful_.

Kaneki mumbles something he can’t catch, and Hide smiles helplessly. “Can’t hear you, only bats can.”

“I said you’re embarrassing, Hide,” Kaneki hisses, stuffing his knuckles into his mouth to muffle his laughter. “Can you _please_ come out so I can make sure you’re really alright? Some of those books look really heavy.” He slips his hand into Hide’s, still flushing furiously, and tugs a little.

Hide’s cheeks set on fire. At least they match now, he thinks, in a wobbly sort of way.

Kaneki’s hand is _warm._

Hide sternly tells his skipping heart to behave, and very carefully sheds all his books and climbs to his feet. “There. Saved from my fate of Death by Words.” He surveys the books at his feet so he doesn’t have to look at Kaneki. They’re still holding hands. “I don’t want to pick these up. Let the cycle of hate continue.”

Someone clears their throat even as Kaneki’s whole body begins to shake with laughter. Hide whips around and in the process nearly falls over again, and Kaneki’s grip on his hand tightens before he lets go.

“We’ll take care of this,” says the irritated-looking assistant, pushing back her glasses. “Please, just go.”

Hide turns to her gravely. “ _Avenge me_ ,” he whispers, and Kaneki twitches, and begins to apologize and push him bodily out of the library.

*

A discussion about schoolwork on their walk home turns into Hide ranting about howmodern lit _mortally offends_ him, which in turn makes Kaneki chuckle at what he’s saying and offer to help him out with the tough parts.

Hide cocks his head, abandoning his speech. “Yeah?”

Kaneki looks away. His hands squeeze the strap of his bag tightly. “Sunday, I’m going to visit Hinami-chan at the café I work at,” he tells the sidewalk. “She usually makes me help her with the difficult words in books, but these days she has this anime she really likes, and we watch it together.”

“Huh,” Hide says, not sure where this is going, but not wanting to interrupt. “Sounds awesome.”

Kaneki scratches his cheek with a fingernail sheepishly. “I think so too, but the problem is, I’m terrible at staying awake in front of a TV no matter what it I’m watching.” He sighs when Hide blinks at him. “You’re laughing at me again, aren’t you?”

Hide reaches up to pull the corners of his mouth downwards, turning his goofy grin upside down. “Nuh-uh, no way. See? This is my serious face.”

“You don’t _have_ a serious face,” Kaneki complains, smiling widely. “You don’t have a serious anything, Hide. And please stop making that face, people are staring.”

“Only in envy,” Hide says complacently, dropping his hands back in their pockets. “So? You were saying?”

Kaneki blinks once before he nearly trips over himself. “Oh right! Sorry,” he says. He looks embarrassedly up at the sky. “I was thinking. I’m a little behind on the text myself, and antiderivatives are beginning to really confuse me. So maybe you could come with me, and we could, um. Study together. Only if you want to, though!” he says quickly, finally glancing back at Hide. His eyes widen. “…Hide?”

Hide knows he’s gone beet red, and he’s probably being rude, but he can’t _stop,_ his cheeks feel like they’re on fire.

Both of Kaneki’s hands fly up to his mouth, and from behind them, Hide can see how hard he’s blushing. They make eye contact for a second, and they both go redder, and look away quickly.

Hide has to be very quiet for the next few minutes so they walk without talking, keeping a very careful two inches between their shoulders.

 When he finally clears his throat, he sounds like an old man. He still can’t look at Kaneki, he might explode. “Sunday sounds cool.”

Kaneki makes a squeaky affirmative noise. “I’ll mail you the details,” he tells a spot a few meters ahead of Hide.

“Cool,” Hide says again, and takes a few gulps of breath to calm down. There’s a floaty feeling in his stomach that only grows every time Kaneki takes quick little peeks at him through his bangs.“That’s, um. Really cool.”

Kaneki laughs. He’s not blushing quite as hard anymore, so his cheeks are only a little pink. His mouth is set in a pleased shape, soft and happy. “That’s good then.”

Hide nods, overwhelmed. It really is.

*

Hide wasn’t kidding when he said Kaneki had no problems with people disliking him- the first day he came to school, Kaneki had had to fight his way out of a swarm of friendly classmates to blink at him and shyly say hi.

Hide saying hi back -without stuttering, level up- meant said classmates sweeping broadly over to him as well, casually thumping him on the back and asking him about his old school. Hide went maybe a little overboard with the details, painfully aware of Kaneki at his side, smiling and nodding at everything he said.

The girls are all pretty without being scary and don’t seem to mind at all that he spaces out or asks weird questions about the layout of the school. There are as many ghouls as there are humans, or something close to that, and Hide comes down with a touch of culture shock by how peaceful it all is. The cafeteria stocks pretty artificial ghoul bentos side by side with bread, and the vending machines stocks both kinds of coffee, and that’s just how things are here.

It’s pretty much what Hide has been expecting from the quietest ward in Tokyo, and it’s…nice. It’s really nice. Hide almost can’t believe he was sent here on a job.

It’s a little weird. The records say that there are three half-ghouls in Hide’s year, but the only thing that seems to set the other two apart from Kaneki is that Kaneki is cuter. It makes zero sense. Unless, of course, this whole mission is a ruse to get Hide out of Amon’s hair.

The possibility makes him squint suspiciously at the open window on Skype, where Amon is patiently waiting for him to make his move on the online chessboard.

“Amon-san,” he says sadly. “It’s time for me to leave the nest. I get it.”

Amon blinks at him owlishly. He’s still wearing a suit, and Hide takes it to mean that he’s still at work. Hide aspires to someday have a shoulder-span that blocks out everything else on the screen too. Sometimes Akira manages to fit in, but only by elbowing Amon aside and practically sitting on him. It’s really impressive.

“Five points for strategy. You’re deteriorating, Nagachika.” Then, tentatively, he asks, “Is this about Kaneki-kun?”

Hide sort of feels bad about talking for an hour each day about Kaneki to his superiors, about how self-conscious about being a half-ghoul he is, how he reads artsy-fartsy books that make Hide wince with apparent enjoyment. About how his hair looks when he’s standing at the rooftop laughing, about how he wears all his clothes two sizes too big and doesn’t like the cute artificial ghoul food with pink coloring.

Amon looks like he’s bracing himself for a storm. It’s still better than Akira, who immediately ends the call as soon as he brings up Kaneki’s name, or Seidou, who stuffs his fingers in his ears and starts singing at the top of his voice.

“No it’s not,” Hide says, and pretends not to notice Amon’s sigh of relief. “It’s about you telling me to spread my wings, Amon-san.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I guess I could become a freelance programmer or something,” Hide says. “The CCG has better job security, but, well. Can’t be helped, if you’re firing me.”

Amon rubs the bridge of his nose warily. “Technically speaking, you never worked for us, so we can’t fire you.” He looks straight at Hide, earnest. “But even if we could, we wouldn’t be. What brought this on, Nagachika?”

“Thanks, Amon-san,” Hide says, touched. “I was just kidding, of course you can’t kick me out. I was just feeling bad about slacking off.”

“You’re not-” Amon clears his throat. “Well. The priority right now is in getting a proper high school education. You knew that already. And you seem to like it there?”

“I really do.”

It’s just that there’s something vaguely off; Hide can’t put his finger on what it is, exactly, but the feeling nags at him. “Just monitoring a random half-ghoul seems a bit…”

Amon waits him out, and eventually Hide shrugs, grinning. “Guess I should just chill, huh.”

Amon smiles back. “Very much so. Speaking of which, I found the footage of Special Investigator Arima’s recent confrontation in Ward 11.”

The naggy feeling flies out of his mind as Hide nearly knocks his laptop off the desk. “ _No_ _way_.”

“Try to learn something this time, instead of simply coming up with creative ways to steal his quinque,” Amon tells him sternly, before Hide can get too excited. Hide snaps his jaw shut against his protest and nods; when Amon lectures him, he’s learned to _listen_. “And you always assume that the type of kagune restricts certain ways of moving. While the way an ukaku and, say, a koukaku fight are generally different, they’re not mutually exclusive. These ghouls are highly trained and flexible, and your last report shows that you’re weak against deviations from the norm. Ghouls, like humans, are able to change and adapt.”

Amon taps his fingers on his desk, serious. “Learn to read situations. You’re at a disadvantage for as long as you compartmentalize so heavily, Nagachika.”

Hide peeks at his window nervously. “Yes, sir.”

Amon’s expression softens. “Nothing has changed,” he tells Hide. “You’re still an indispensable part of the CCG.”

Hide feels like crying. “Amon-san…” He sniffles a little.

Amon’s eyes widen, and Hide tries not to laugh as he visibly panics. “There, there,” he says awkwardly. “Er. Think about Kaneki-kun. He wouldn’t want you to cry.”

Hide beams, leaning very close to the webcam. “No he wouldn’t! And do you know, he watches anime with Hinami-chan on Sundays and wants me to help him stay awake this week?”

“…anime,” Amon echoes.

Hide nods, very fast, making his hair flick into his eyes. “I can’t wait!”

“I’m very happy for-”

“And he’s gonna tutor me for literature!”

“Yes, Nagachika, I remember you telling me-”

“High school is so great, Amon-san,” Hide says fervently, and Amon seems fond and alarmed by how intensely he’s staring at the camera. “I love it.”

“If you say so,” says Amon. He looks like he has a headache.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god I cant deal with them anymore. Literally cannot wait for Touka to rage into the story and punch the shoujo out of everyone.
> 
> And thank you so much for sticking with the fic despite the weirdly timed updates, I promise I'll try to be consistent from now on. :) 
> 
> ETA: welp many mistakes found a few corrected can't help how much they're blushing

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically my attempt to introduce sickening shoujo manga tropes to the TG 'verse. Expect cherry blossoms, dokis, and Kaneki being the most perfect love interest ever. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
